Friday, July 4th was not much of a holiday for us, though the night before Remy had prayed for a happy fourth of July. At a little short of 2pm I was working at my terminal trying to consolidate my mp3s and Al was at hers playing an Internet game. Both screens went black at the same time, along with the rest of our electricity. This was folllowed by a really severe t-storm, and the power didn't come back on. So we went out to eat, went to Meijer (despite my admission that "I'd rather watch a dog die than go shopping") came back - no power. We went to bed and napped till almost 8pm. Still no power.
We went to the Pittsfield Big Boy and I called my friend Keith in hopes that we could stay the night there, but he was also without power. Mrs. Lewis, as many of you may know, has a heart condition and cannot endure the heat without air conditioning - with AC she is kindly Dr. Jekyll; without it Mr. Hyde comes forth. So as we have a gazillion Sheraton points (owing to a fall Al sustained in a shower stall in Philadelphia, that required a brief hospitalization) we booked a room for the night.
We watched three or four fireworks displays simultaneously from the front stoop of the Pittsfield Big Boy. It occurs to me that watching Fireworks from a distance is very different from having them on top of you - it's more relaxing and graceful, as they seem to be dancing rather than exploding. I remember in Los Angeles watching more than a dozen simultaneous fireworks displays from the balcony of my father's "condo in Redondo" over the L.A. skyline; that was like visiting the cosmos and watching galaxies whirl around.
At the hotel I was able to take my daughter swimming in one of those pools that is part inside and part outside - a pity that there were no fireworks visible by that time. At the Sheraton we had exactly the opposite experience from what we would have had at home - we were given a room with a faulty thermostat which would not rise above 62 degrees. Remy told me the next morning that she had dreams of Antarctica -"Oh, I love all the penguins and polar bears, but I was freezing."
Uncle Dave Lewis
note new email address
UncleDave41@comcast.net